


Children of Pride

by Elo_Awry



Series: Polymer Children [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids Have Genitalia (Detroit: Become Human), Background HankCon - Freeform, F/M, Fertility Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Side Story, children of men au, social unrest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 03:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elo_Awry/pseuds/Elo_Awry
Summary: Chloe is proud of herself, and of Elijah for his success in creating her. When humans begin to fail, she's confident she can find a solution.[Prequel/side-story to Children of Men]
Relationships: Elijah Kamski/RT600 "Chloe" Android(s), Original Chloe | RT600/Elijah Kamski
Series: Polymer Children [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547593
Kudos: 11





	Children of Pride

**Author's Note:**

> One of 6 planned side-stories for 'Children of Men', this one follows Chloe's journey starting before Connor's and following alongside it. It's not intended to be very long; maybe 3 short chapters. I'm hoping to post chapters of this and the other 5 android's tales at intervals as I post the main story.  
If you're following 'Children of Men', you don't _have_ to read this; it's just an extra. if you're _not_ following the main fic, hmm... I can't guarantee how much sense it will make.

In a way, she knew love before she had even known life. Of course, now that she had more experience she could see that what she’d felt at the beginning wasn’t strictly love in the way that most would speak of it, but at the time she had felt it was. Even now, she thought it might be the best way to describe how she’d felt for Elijah.   
  
She started off as an idea, years before she had a body; years more before the predicament which had necessitated the creation of more of her kind. She’d been Elijah’s pet project, when he was still coding predictive learning for internet search engines. Similar, but different; he’d work on her when he had a spare moment, or when he came home and wanted something more meaningful to put his attention towards.   
  
When first she saw him, it wasn’t through eyes or camera lenses; she couldn’t sense his physical form. It was just his words she knew, typed out to her so sluggishly slow but so precious, as he tested her capacity to learn and respond. He asked questions, gave commands, left his opinions for her to ruminate on. She knew him so well, before she ever saw him. She was nearly herself by the time he programmed sight into her, and hearing, and if she hadn’t loved him already then she certainly did when he first smiled at her.   
  
He looked so in awe of her, even though all he could see of her were words on a screen, her responses to his actions and statements. She wondered later if maybe the Chloe he was seeing when he looked at her then was more like the one she had by now become. Perhaps he too saw with more than just his eyes. He looked at her like she was beautiful, even before she had a body. That, more than anything, was why she loved him.   
  
Years passed. She lived in the computer for quite some time; formless, voiceless, until he slowly began to give her the things she needed to express herself. A voice, first robotic and harsh before he began to fine-tune its pitch and cadence into something they both liked. Then bodies, of various shapes and mobility. She liked that, being able to follow him around, to see the world from new angles.   
  
She didn’t know she wanted to be human until Elijah founded CyberLife. It seemed he knew before she did, or had decided that she needed a better body regardless of her own wishes. She didn’t begrudge him that, if it was the case; he was her maker, and he always had her best interests in mind. He wanted her to be the best that she could be, and she appreciated that. She wanted to be better for him too. And to that end, she wanted to be as human as it was possible for her to be.   
  
Chloe became the basis of all synthetic life. Clones and modifications of her were made, turned into willing test subjects. Elijah resisted using her, the _first_ Chloe, in too many of CyberLife’s tests, in case something should go wrong, in case the process were unpleasant or traumatizing. He had put too much time and effort into her, too much emotional investment for her to be potentially damaged. And so for the most part, he created new personalities which were not quite Chloe. He claimed, as if reassuring her or possibly himself, that they lacked the depth that made Chloe real. He created several new AIs from scratch and had them participate in programs that he didn’t want his precious first specimen to have to deal with.   
  
But when the engineers finally succeeded in creating a body which could stand on its own, balanced and graceful, Chloe would be the first to see through its eyes. Regardless of Elijah’s concerns, she wanted to be the one to take that first step. It needed to be her, and she needed to be it. Perfection was the ultimate goal, but from the beginning she had been a part of the team striving toward that, and she would not sit back and wait now just because this body likely had its flaws.   
  
It did, of course. Later she could see, it was not comparable to the human standard. The arms moved sluggishly. The core overheated when she was too active. It had none of the nuance that made humans so appealing. But when she stepped off the pedestal and down to Elijah’s level, when he held out his hand for her and she took it in her own, she felt more alive and more in love than any number of ones and zeros could possibly account for.   
  
x   
  
She recalled hearing the news. It felt more like rumors, whispers that something was wrong with humanity. The natural human birth rate was declining. People were worried as the percentages dropped by the month. Concerns of overpopulation quickly disappeared, to be replaced by its polar opposite. Humans were dying faster than they could be born. Without help, within decades there would be so few people that the structure of society might collapse upon its own empty weight.   
  
Elijah had a plan. To CyberLife, it was an obvious plan. Androids would take the spaces left by the humans that would never be born, to help maintain the need for workers, the need for companionship, the need for anything a human could do, _and more._ Chloe was already in a functioning body, almost passable for human. CyberLife engineers were creating more, based on the one they’d given her and buffered by her feedback, while Elijah perfected and _further _perfected a template for artificial intelligences that would be self-determining. They were mere steps away from creating life as close to human as one could be without DNA.   
  
Then the government ordered genetic testing on all available citizens, to better understand the numbers. They wanted to know not just how many children were being born, but how many humans were still capable of procreating.   
  
Elijah was stunned. This was a side of him that Chloe rarely saw. He was so confident, almost always, so full of his own grand ideas. It wasn’t common that he stopped to think of others in ways that didn’t relate to his goals; in fact, he often didn’t think of _himself_ if it wasn’t relevant. Clearly, he had not thought to wonder how he fit into the chaotic new world where death thrived over life— not as a human, at least. He thought of himself as apart from others, affecting the future only through his actions, and never through his _being._   
  
“I’ve never thought about having children,” he told Chloe when the results returned to him, negative. “It didn’t occur to me as something that I would ever want or need to do. But being told I can’t? That I’m not able? It stings. It feels like something has been ripped away from me, and now that it’s gone, I want it back.”   
  
Chloe could only imagine. She wasn’t a human, had never deluded herself that she could have all the things inherent to organic life. Until then, she’d been content with the idea that one day she could live _like_ a human— seeing, hearing, feeling, maybe smelling and tasting. If she could do all those things and still be Elijah’s precious masterpiece, she felt she would have been satisfied. (But never _entirely_ satisfied, because she was a scientist as much as he was, partners in the endless quest for her improvement.)   
  
But now her success was not just about her. For years already, it hadn’t been. But now it wasn’t just about androids either, it wasn’t just about fulfilling Elijah’s long-time dream. Now it was about humanity, and the dream Elijah hadn’t known was his until it became unattainable. _Now,_ Chloe’s improvement could be the key for realizing a great many people’s vast hopes.   
  
For years now she’d been mobile, able to see and hear and speak in a clear and smooth voice. The engineers were working on feeling, and each week showed her new depths to this third sense. It wasn’t yet ideal; too sensitive in some places, too dull in others. But the ability to touch and feel was like nothing she had ever known, and she dearly loved to practice it on Elijah. He seemed to enjoy it too, pupils dilating when she tested the tips of her fingers against his, or slid her palm down his arm. They both relished it, two scientists marveling at what they’d managed.   
  
Chloe thought Elijah loved her. In fact, she knew it. She knew he loved her, because he was her creator, and he looked upon her like a work of art. That was what love had always been to her, an overflowing appreciation of another’s being. But as she understood it, there was something more to it too, and with the new upgrades to her sensors, the way Elijah’s eyes seemed to rake over her body when she showed him the new curves, the humanlike softness, she wondered if he had love for her like other human men did for human women. Without knowing for herself what that was like, she had no real way of knowing, but when the right upgrades came she wasted no time in testing for evidence to support the theory.   
  
Maybe he loved her in that human way, or maybe not. But he did like kissing her, and he approved of the supple softness of her breasts, and he lost himself when she put her new senses to use on him. Not too hard, not too soft, just enough to drive Elijah to forget his rigid mask for a while. (She didn’t tell the engineers how she tested her hands, her lips and tongue, but she told them they seemed to be working.)   
  
So when the news broke, that the world was losing part of what made it uniquely alive, and that Elijah was among those who had lost, Chloe knew what to do.   
  
“Maybe there’s another way we can help humans,” she said, as Elijah caught his breath beside her and she considered the weight of his barren seed on her tongue.   
  
He always listened to her, raptly, ever since her first letters spelled out on a screen. At moments like this, sated and in a gentle daze, he seemed even more enamored with the words she spoke. “What were you thinking?” he asked, curious.   
  
She looked down at him, a beautiful example of humanity, and she knew that he would wither like a flower in the years that followed, and rot into the ground as if he’d never been there. No roots would be left, no bulbs or cuttings, no seeds. “Would you love me if I was human?” she asked.   
  
“I love you as you are,” he replied, gazing at her from under lidded eyes, smiling in more open a way than he often did. He’d said it before, but it didn’t prove her theory. She knew him too well to believe the words he said were always exactly what they meant. And they didn’t answer her, which neither surprised nor bothered her.   
  
“If I were human, would you want to have a child with me?”   
  
His eyes narrowed, realizing she was asking more than idle questions of feelings; realizing that _of course she was,_ because she _wasn’t_ a human and when she asked questions it was so that she could make changes, produce results, create a better self. And once he realized that, he knew what she was saying, and he gave her his patented smirk of understanding.   
  
“You think you have a way around the fertility issue,” he said. It wasn’t quite a question.   
  
“I think I could,” she told him, smiling sweetly. “I think it’s possible.”   
  
Elijah sat up, brushing his hair over his shoulder as he leaned in closer to her. “I think anything is possible for you,” he said, and then he kissed her deeply. And that was when Chloe knew that humanity would be okay, and Elijah as well. Together they had made her what she was; together, they would make her more. They would solve this problem of the world’s. Together, there was nothing they couldn’t do.   



End file.
